Saint Joseph Catholic Church

Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica at the beginning of the second and final day of the extraordinary consistory of cardinals (booklet, video).

“Fear is not overcome with words; it is overcome with witness,” Father Francesco Ielpo, OFM, said on January 7. “Seeing Christians from all over the world come to the Holy Land to visit the holy places generates hope and strengthens the reason for coming here—not to see a museum, but to encounter a living Church.”

In the 14th century, the Holy See entrusted the care of the holy sites in the Holy Land to the care of the Franciscan order.

“War is back in vogue and the zeal for war is spreading,” Pope Leo XIV said in a January 9 speech to the Vatican diplomatic corps. Basing his address on the thought of St. Augustine, the Pontiff made an appeal for a new approach to international collaboration, which “cannot depend on mere circumstances and military or strategic interests.”